University Students' Knowledge and Practices of Food Safety

This study aims to find out university students' knowledge and practices about food safety. Study group consisted of 582 students who either took or did not take dietetics, aged between 17- 30 at Gazi University in Ankara. At data collection stage, a questionnaire was applied to students about their knowledge and practices related to food safety. At the end of the statistical analyses it has been found that scores of those who took dietetics (5.4 +/- 2.40) were higher than those who did not take dietetics (2.7 +/- 2.23) about knowledge related to food safety and again scores of those who took dietetics (15.5 +/-.65) was higher than those who did not take dietetics (13.7 +/- 3.60) about practices related to food safety and the difference has been found to be statistically significant (p<0.01). Knowledge related to food safety has been found to be high by 37.3% in the group taking dietetics and by 7.4% in the group not taking dietetics while practices related to food safety have been found to be high by 57.0% in the group taking dietetics and by 39.7% in the group not taking dietetics. It has been concluded that gender and dietetics affect knowledge and practices of students in the study group. Inclusion of training on food safety at school curricula from time to time will contribute to solutions about health problems related to food.